Home Window and Door Inspection Form Template
The whole-house inspector passes through the property in an afternoon; the window and door surveyor is a different animal entirely. Three trades run this survey, and none of them are producing a transaction report. The replacement contractor is scoping a quote — every opening is a line item with a price waiting inside it. The energy auditor is hunting thermal losses — every failed seal is a number in a savings calculation. The property manager is building an asset register — every unit has a condition score, a remaining life, and a place in next year’s capital plan. What all three share is a unit of analysis: not the house, but the individual opening. Forty windows are forty records, and the survey that treats them as one observation is a survey nobody can quote from. This template is built opening by opening.
The Unit Schedule: Every Opening Gets an ID
The survey’s backbone is its numbering. Walk the property in order and assign each opening an ID as you reach it — W-01, W-02 through the ground-floor front, then upward and onward; D-01 for the front door, and so on. The ID is a short field on each unit’s record, and it earns its keep three times over: it ties each photograph to its opening, it lets the client’s questions come back as what’s the story with W-14? instead of the small one in the back room, near the…, and it lets the eventual quote reference units by name. Per unit, capture the identity basics from a dropdown set: type (casement, double-hung, slider, sliding door, French door), frame material, approximate age where known, and orientation — because north-facing units age differently and lose heat differently.
Per-Unit Condition, Dimension by Dimension
Each unit’s record walks the same five dimensions, so the whole schedule stays comparable:
- Frame. Rot at sills, corrosion, cracks, paint failure down to bare wood — the structural verdict on the opening.
- Glass. Cracks, and the quiet failure most owners can’t name: misting between panes, the signature of a dead seal in double glazing.
- Hardware. Locks, handles, hinges, balance mechanisms — does it lock, does it hold open, does the sash stay where you put it?
- Operation. Opens, closes, seals when shut. The unit that hasn’t opened since the last owner is common enough to be its own finding.
- Seals and weatherstripping. Visible gaps, hardened or missing strips, and the draft test — hand, smoke pencil, or incense — with the result recorded.
Close each unit with an action code from a three-way choice: replace, repair, or monitor. The code is the survey’s payload — it’s what the rollup counts, what the quote prices, and what the capital plan schedules.
The Measurements: Where the Quote Lives
For units coded for replacement, the numbers turn the survey into a scope of work: width and height in numeric fields per unit, rough-opening versus unit-size noted where it matters, and glazing spec recorded where visible. A contractor who leaves the property with measurements attached to unit IDs quotes the job that evening; one who leaves with the big bay in the front needs doing returns for a second visit — and so does the client’s patience. The measurements also expose the survey’s arithmetic in the response records: filter by action code and the rollup is standing in front of you — nine replacements, six repairs, twenty-five monitors, sized and located.
Drafts and Thermal Findings, Located Precisely
For the energy angle, existence isn’t enough — location is the finding. The house is drafty produces a shrug; W-04, W-05, and the D-02 threshold show measurable draft at the meeting rail and sill produces a work order and an estimated saving. Record which units failed the draft test, where on the unit the loss sits, and whether glazing is single or failed-double — the three data points an energy calculation actually consumes. Over a portfolio of properties, these same fields aggregate into the pattern that energy-retrofit programs are built from: which building era loses heat through its sashes, which through its thresholds, and what fixing either is worth.
Running It Across Properties
Property managers and auditors run this survey across dozens of buildings, so the multi-property pattern matters: duplicate the form per property so each building’s survey is a clean, dated dataset, tag each with its address through a structured field, and compare schedules side by side when the capital plan is drafted. Completed surveys can alert the office on arrival so quoting starts the same day — speed-to-quote being the difference between winning the replacement job and being the second number the homeowner considers.
This survey feeds directly into the commercial side of fenestration work: the estimate templates and quote formats that price its rollup, plus the wider business forms collection for the surrounding trade paperwork.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I keep unit numbering consistent across revisits and other surveyors?
Fix a convention and write it down: number in the order walked, clockwise from the street-facing corner, ground floor before upper. The convention matters less than its existence — W-14 must mean the same opening to every person who touches the schedule, including the installer months later. Put the convention in the form’s opening instructions so any surveyor picking up a device produces a compatible schedule.
What's the minimum data set for a replacement quote?
Unit ID, type, frame material, width and height, action code, and one photograph. Everything beyond that refines the price rather than enabling it. Surveyors who try to capture full specification on every unit slow themselves down without improving the quote — the deep specification questions belong to the sales visit that follows a priced proposal, where the customer is present to answer them.
How does the survey turn into a quote without manual re-entry?
The rollup is designed for it: filter the schedule by action code, and the replacements with their measurements and photographs are grouped and priced in order. Where your estimating or CRM system accepts data, a webhook carries each survey across on completion so the quote builds from the record rather than from retyped notes. The manual path — export, sort, price — still beats a clipboard, because the numbers were captured once, correctly, at the opening itself.
Can this survey feed a formal energy audit?
As the fenestration module, yes — with honest scope. Draft locations, glazing type, and seal condition are exactly the window-and-door inputs an audit consumes; what this survey deliberately doesn’t do is the rest of the audit: blower-door numbers, infrared imaging, wall and attic insulation assessment. Energy auditors run this survey alongside those instruments and enter its results as the openings section of their report — one structured source for the window findings instead of a margin full of sketches.